§ Mr. BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many project licence applications for animal procedures at Porton Down have been(a) approved unamended for submission to the Home Office, (b) approved in amended form for submission to the Home Office and (c) rejected for each month since 1 January 1997.[89451]
§ Mr. Spellar[holding answer 5 July 1999]: This is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. I have asked the Chief Executive to write to the hon. Member.
Letter from Sir John Chisholm to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 6 July 1999:
I have been asked to reply to your parliamentary question about the number of applications for project licences to conduct research involving work with animals, which have been submitted to the Home Office from Porton Down since January 1997.The Chemical and Biological Defence Sector of DERA at Porton Down has operated both an internal consultative process and ethical review process for several years, although the latter was only an official requirement by the Home Office from January 1999.431WThe operation of a preliminary internal consultation process and ethical review means all of the project licence applications are modified, amended and refined prior to application to the Home Office. However, during this period no application was totally rejected and none required resubmission to the ethical review. The numbers of project licence applications processed internally and submitted to the Home Office since January 1997 are shown in the table below.
Number of project licence applications processed Year Month 1997 1998 1999 January 0 0 1 February 2 1 0 March 0 1 0 April 1 1 0 May 2 0 0 June 1 1 1 July 0 2 — August 2 0 — September 0 0 — October 1 0 — November 0 1 — December 0 0 — I hope that you find this information helpful.
§ Mr. BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many animals have been bred for use in experiments at Porton Down in(a) 1997–98 and (b) 1998–99; and how many of each year's total were subsequently killed without being so used. [89453]
§ Mr. Spellar[holding answer 5 July 1999]: This is a matter for the Chief Executive of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. I have asked the Chief Executive to write to the hon. Member.
Letter from Sir John Chisholm to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 6 July 1999:
I have been asked to reply to your question about the numbers of animals bred at the Chemical and Biological Defence Sector of DERA at Porton Down for use in research and the numbers culled without use.These numbers for the financial years 1997–1998 and 1998–1999 are given in the table below.
Species of animal bred 1997–98 1998–99 Mice Weaned 5,656 3,232 Surplus cull 4,468 2,603 Rats Weaned 7,235 4,555 Surplus cull 4,055 3,851 Marmosets Weaned 116 154 Surplus cull 0 0 Rhesus Weaned 42 46 Surplus cull 0 0 Pigs Weaned 44 85 Market sales 18 7 In 1998–99, 2,375 of the culled mice and 3,080 of the culled rats were given to two local bird sanctuaries.
I hope that this information answers your question.